He followed Nevay to the barge.

Kirk could feel the sweat beading on his cheeks, his hands strangling the grip of the pistol as he moved. The barge bobbed there, half-drunk, its heavy hull clunking faintly against the jetty. Whoever'd ridden it here hadn't bothered to mag-anchor it. He could just see a few haphazard coils of wire lashing it in place, and an extended gangplank that edged to and fro.

Ahead of him, Nevay took slow, silent steps, one foot over the other, her pistol raised. Her usual breezy, brash demeanour was gone now, replaced by a tense silence. The cybernetic of her eye whirred and scanned, hunting for any signs of life.

They reached the gangplank.

"Take a look," Nevay said quietly, nodding to the barge.

"Me?" He looked at her askance. "I don't want to go over there."

"I'll cover you."

"Well, why don't I cover you?"

"Because I'm a better shot."

Kirk pulled a sour face and regarded the barge grimly. "Shit. Fine."

"No heroics, Balfour. Just take a look around. If there's a codewraith in the brig, run like hell."

"Oh, thanks for that." He shot her an irate glance, then stuffed the pistol back into his belt and took a deep breath, moving square on to the gangplank. Waiting for the barge's gentle undulation to bring it back towards him, he steadied himself, then hopped off the jetty.

His feet hit the metal of the gangplank and he folded down into a crouch, gripping the sides with both hands. The echo of his landing sounded horribly in the eerie quiet of the ferry terminal, but he tried not to think about that, instead shuffling forward in a half-crawl until he reached the barge itself.

Keeping low, Kirk gripped each side of the entrance where where gangplank met the vessel, and with a grunt of effort, levered himself through the gap. He lowered his feet to the deck as slowly as he could, sinking quietly into a crouch. Swallowing hard, he pulled his pistol out again and looked left and right.

He instantly saw the smears of dried blood on the ship. No bodies, or even body parts here, but the evidence of violence was clear enough. Kirk rose, rotating on the spot. He could see scrapes and bullet marks all over the deck and the steering cabin, along with more tracts of blood.

"Anything?" Nevay called softly.

"Dead hulk." Kirk shook his head, edging out towards the prow. "Nobody's home." He stooped examining some of the blood.

It was totally dry now. Whoever had once owned this ship, he suspected they were long dead. That only lent credence to Nevay's theory of the salvager bringing an unwanted tag-along back from Hadrian, and he didn't like that one bit. At length, he looked back over at his companion.

"Lots of blood. Think your friend Maddie had some unwelcome stowaways."

Nevay grimaced. "Maddie was never stupid enough for that."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning, maybe she stuck her nose a little deeper than she should have." Nevay craned her neck. "Something killed her and took the ship."

"Took the ship?" Kirk shook his head dubiously. "Everything in Hadrian South's supposed to be a feral junk-heap. Could they even do that?"

"Operative phrase being, 'supposed to be', Kirk."

"Ah." He moved further, poking his head into the steering house. The glass was virtually painted with gore, and cracked where something heavy had slammed into it. He could smell metal and chemicals, an acrid tang that made his throat burn. Covering his mouth with one hand, he leaned closer, examining the controls.

Also splattered with blood, but they seemed undamaged. The fuel gauge showed empty, its LED ring blinking an impotent red. Kirk swung himself back out of the cabin and moved over to the guard rail, finding Nevay looking expectantly back at him from the jetty.

"You find anything else?"

"Well, the deck's kind of beat up and she's out of fuel, but otherwise I don't think the barge is actually damaged at all. Maybe we can rig up a tow take it out of here; go over it ourselves somewhere safe?"

"Yeah, maybe." She bit her lip, shaking her head uneasily. "Alright, c'mon. Get back over here. Let's go see if Targe and the others found anything."

Kirk didn't need much encouragement to get off the floating tomb of the barge. He scurried back over the gangplank, and jumped back to the jetty, where Nevay was waiting to catch him by the shoulder. He straightened up, but she held on for a couple of extra seconds.

"You okay?" she asked, looking him in the eye.

He managed a nervous smile. "Yeah, yeah, I'm good."

"Good." Clapping him on the arm, she motioned him to follow, and they set off back into the body of the ferry terminal.

When they re-emerged they found Targe and the others standing awkwardly, speaking in hushed tones, guns still ready and eyes flickering to the windows and doors. They seemed very concerned that whatever had done this could come back at any moment.

Nevay holstered her pistol as she approached, her face a mask of unease. "What've you got?"

"Yeah, pretty nasty business, Nev, and that's sayin' somethin'." Targe shook his head grimly, motioning back over one shoulder with his thumb. "But I think we found something you're gonna want to see."

"So you're saying it gets worse?" Nevay fixed him with a glower.

He shrugged. "Sorry. C'mon."

Bracing himself for more unwelcome revelations, Kirk followed them as they moved from the main terminal concourse and into the offices beyond. In the tighter corridors and rooms they found more evidence of gunfire, and splatters of blood, leading them on a trail to the end of the hall. A heavy metal door lay ajar, and Kirk could glimpse the gore on the other side already.

When they reached it, Targe gave it a nudge with the barrel of his shotgun. It creaked, and made a wet, scraping sound is it passed over a slick of half-dried blood. Beyond the threshold, was the scene of a massacre.

Kirk clamped his jaw tightly shut as the sea of blood and body parts opened out in front of him.

"Fucking hell," Nevay breathed, press a fist over her mouth as she stepped into the room. "Guess this is the rest of Priatt's crew."

"That's what we thought," Targe murmured. "But, boss, there ain't ... enough of them."

Nevay gave him a disgusted look. "Not enough? The hell does that mean?"

"I mean..." He winced. "I mean there's not enough bits and pieces here, Nev. Like, a lot of legs, arms, some bones, but not a lot of... heads; torsos."

"Bloody evergrind." Nevay pressed a hand over her eyes. "So you're telling me that whoever – whatever – did this, it took half the god-damned body parts away with them?"

"I mean, can't say one-hundred percent, but it looks that way." Targe looked thoroughly unsettled now, as though the process of actually explaining what he'd found had made it orders of magnitude worse. He exchanged uneasy glances with the other members of the crew.

"Why?" Kirk murmured, his mind racing. "Who – what – would do that?"

"Not sure I wanna know, kid."

Nevay slowly slid her knife back into its sheathe with a shake of her head. "What in the fuck is happening out here?"

*

She moved slowly and carefully along the narrow ledge, acutely aware of the acrid waters of the river slapping at the stonework just a couple of feet below. Her eyes tracked the gang members as they slunk out of the ferry terminal, a pack of scavengers who looked a lot less sure of themselves than they had when they'd entered.

Her eyes narrowed, her temple implants springing to life and generating a holographic visor across her eyes. The display picked out the bodies of the gangers, ID tags flashing into existence as the corporate databases matched the faces and names. She raised a quizzical eyebrow when she saw that Kirk Balfour was among them.

Not someone she'd expected to be chumming around with Nevay Jennings, but there had been plenty of stranger things happening in Hadrian of late.

She watched them with interest, listening to their hushed, frantic conversations as they scurried away from the terminal. Whatever they'd uncovered, it had terrified them. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, they scampered away into the night, leaving her in the eerie quiet of the deserted dockside.

A Shan-Halo oil hauler crawled into view beyond the terminal, its six decks rising much larger than the diminutive building. She watched and waited as the massive, steep-sided vessel chugged its way through the acrid waters of the Hadrian, moving up river towards the vast industrial docks in the city's heart.

Once the behemoth was a safe distance away, she slithered from her hiding place and ghosted her way across the open space, moving with mouse-like silence. She reached the door and paused to catch her breath, steeling herself for what she might find inside.

Holly Lockley stepped into the terminal.

Her dark hair hung longer now, tied back into thick braids, the fringe sweeping down across the right side of her face. The dim lights illuminated her features; tanned skin, glittering blue eyes above a broad nose and full-lipped mouth. The hems of her AmpCore academy leggings disappeared beneath her boots, clumping lightly against the concrete as she walked. Her short jacket hung open to reveal a high-necked tank top, and its shoulder bore a molten circle where once, the stamp of Gammaton Avionics had been emblazoned.

She'd melted it off when she fled the academy.

Holly's breath hitched in her throat as the memories hit her again. A wave of images from her old life swelled; a fantasy just beyond her reach. Everything had seemed to clear. She'd known her place in the world, and known her responsibilities – her exact position within the majestic machine of Hadrian's corporations.

Then Piper Russell happened, and everything went to hell.

She didn't even blame Piper, not really. The girl was strong, but she was flailing in the dark, blundering through a china shop and swinging a sledgehammer in all directions. In doing so, she'd upended a plan that had been almost a decade in the planning, and Holly's life along with it. The AI was dead, the facility compromised, and Holly Lockley was now nothing more than a loose end – a failed operative to be cast aside.

And she would have been cast aside permanently if she hadn't run. She was certain of it.

Stepping slowly forward, Holly eased her amplifier out of its sheathe, running her eyes dispassionately over the remains of Priatt's unfortunate associates. The wand in her right hand pulsed softly, sending invisible tendrils groping out into the gloom, crawling over the ravaged bodies and scraping through the air for any lingering traces of their attackers.

The first thing she felt was the ravaged, broken pieces of the datastream leaking out of what was left of the ferry terminal's systems. More than just human bodies had been butchered by whatever came through here. It was like an electronic hurricane had torn through the place. Holly reached into the computers and security networks that had once held sway over this place.

Mangled. Corrupted. Dead.

A chill went up her spine at the totality of the destruction. The butchery of the unfortunate gang members left her in no doubt as to the parties responsible. Someone, somewhere, had picked up where she and her previous benefactors had left off. A twinge of fury rippled through her implants and the floor plates around her buckled with a groan of metal.

As she delved through the sea of gore, however, her feelers found something that didn't belong. She closed her eyes, wrapping gentle tendrils of force around the intrusive nugget buried amongst the bodies.

It came free with a faint squelch.

Wincing, Holly gave a gentle twist of her wrist.

The glinting object lifted out from amongst the body parts, light bouncing off its crimson-stained surface. She brought it floating through the air towards her, her brow furrowing as it hovered a few feet in front of her face. With a gentle wash of gravitic force, she peeled away the layer of dried blood that caked it.

Beneath she found a shard of metal, but nothing that had come from Priatt's filthy sex-traffickers, she knew that much. The alloy was dense and tough, its edges ragged from where it had been ripped from a larger piece. She brought it closer to her, letting her implants feel its structure, pressing and probing at the atoms.

When she realised what it was, she almost dropped it, a sharp breath hitching in her throat.

A sliver of armoured alloy, structurally similar to the wraiths constructed by her associates. Only this piece was older, much older. Holly licked dry lips and squinted at the little piece of metal. With a deft twitch of her amplifier, she placed it in the palm of her hand. Denser; tougher, and without the chemical identifiers of the newly fashioned machines on this side of the river.

With her jaw clenched tight with unease, Holly walked down to the jetty, tracing the residual footsteps of Nevay and Kirk down to the abandoned barge. Her amplifier flickered as she examined the vessel, and found the evidence of slaughter embedded in its deck plates. Blood, firearm residue, bullet and blade holes – the thing was a mess to a trained eye.

Her gaze drifted unwillingly to the dark smear of Hadrian South visible beyond the ferry terminal windows.

"What the hell?" she whispered to herself.

The growl of an engine snapped her out of her thoughts and she whirled around, sprinting back through the building and into the lobby. Lights flickered through the windows on the western side of the building; vehicle headlights. No sirens, and she seriously doubted the local police would risk coming this deep into the chaotic stretch of riverbank.

That left rival gangs, or the corporations, neither of whom she was interested in tangling with right now. Holly barely broke stride as she pelted out of the building, turning right towards the river and scampering her way down towards the battered, water-burned walkways that festooned the banks.

She darted down a set of stairs and sprinted east, the black water now lapping just a few meters below her. The chemical stink of it filled her nostrils, but she ignored it, scurrying deeper into the darkness. Her amplifier pulsed, giving her just enough light to see the way ahead.

Holly ran for almost a kilometre before she felt she'd put a safe distance between herself and the slaughterhouse, her head pounding with questions. Her pace slowed piece by piece, until she found an old viewing platform, rusted and decrepit, with half its length shorn off and submerged beneath the river. It was quiet – not a soul in sight, and only a few distant barges and cargo haulers chugging back and forth out above the water.

Exhaling deeply, Holly sat down on the edge of the platform, legs dangling off the side, her boots just a few inches from the acrid water. She curled her fingers shut around the shard of metal and let her eyes wander back out across the black water of the Hadrian river. Hadrian South stared bleakly back at her.

"Who are you?" Holly murmured. "Why are you here?"

||